Hamas Israel war live updates: Hamas, IDF clash as Gaza Strip invasion imminent; Hezbollah target Lebanon border; Joe Biden to visit; Rafah Crossing progress stalls

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A Russian-drafted UN Security Council resolution that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in Gaza failed to pass on Monday, while a vote on a rival Brazilian text was delayed until Tuesday.

The draft resolution received five votes in favour and four votes against, along with six abstentions. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the five permanent members – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain – to pass.

Vassily Nebenzia, permanent representative of Russia to the United Nations.Credit: AP

“Today, the entire world waited with bated breath for the Security Council to take steps in order to put an end to the bloodletting, but the delegations of the Western countries have basically stomped on those expectations,” said Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia.

Russia proposed the one-page draft text on Friday, which also called for the release of hostages, humanitarian aid access, and the safe evacuation of civilians in need. The text condemned violence against civilians and all acts of terrorism, but did not name Hamas, which killed 1300 people in Israel on October 7.

“By failing to condemn Hamas, Russia is giving cover to a terrorist group that brutalises innocent civilians. It is outrageous. It is hypocritical and it is indefensible,” said the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

She said the US, which traditionally shields its ally Israel from council action, does “agree that this council should take action, but we have to get it right and we’ll work intensively with all members on the council to do so”.

Reuters

A partisan Algerian crowd could await Australia in their first set of World Cup qualifiers, with the Socceroos’ away fixture against Palestine set to be relocated due to the escalating conflict.

The Algerian Football Federation said in a statement on Monday they would welcome the Palestinians for all their home World Cup qualifiers - the first of which is against the Socceroos on November 21.

Fans supporting the Palestinian cause at the World Cup in Qatar last year.Credit: AP

Spikes in regional unrest have often forced the Palestinian Football Association to take international matches to neutral Asian countries but the shift to the north African state would mark a significant change.

Palestine’s most recent international on home soil took place in 2019 in the disputed capital of Jerusalem, when they played Saudi Arabia.

“The president of the Algerian Football Federation, Mr Walid Sadi, announces that our country will host the official Palestine-Australia match, scheduled for November,” the AFF said.

The solidarity between Palestine and Algeria is longstanding: when he won the English Premier League title with Manchester City in 2021, Algerian forward Riyad Mahrez opted to wave a Palestinian flag.

It’s just gone 4am in Tel-Aviv and Gaza City. I’m Rachael Dexter, thank you for reading this morning - my colleague Ben Cubby will run the blog for the rest of today.

Here’s a run-down of the current state of play and what we’ve been reporting so far this morning:

Injured Palestinians arrive at al-Shifa Hospital following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City on Monday.Credit: AP

From Australia...

Hamas released a video late on Monday of one of the nearly 200 Israelis believed to be held hostage in Gaza, The New York Times is reporting.

The newspaper reports that the 60-second video begins with Mia Shem, 21, receiving medical treatment for a wound above her right elbow and shows her arm being wrapped in bandages by a person off-camera. The Times says metadata shows parts of the video file was filmed at least six days ago.

Shem was one of those who disappeared from the site of a music festival where at least 260 people were killed, and in the footage reportedly speaks directly to the camera in Hebrew.

The Times reports Shem says that she is being looked after in Gaza and that her arm was operated on for three hours at a hospital. The video ends with her plea to be returned to Israel.

“I just ask that I am returned as fast as possible to my family, to my parents, and to my siblings,” she reportedly says. “Please get us out of here as quickly as possible.”

The Israeli military issued a statement after the video was released that said Hamas was “trying to portray itself as a humane organisation, while it is a murderous terrorist organisation responsible for the murder and abduction of babies, women, children and elderly”.

A friend of the Shem family said the family had seen the clip and confirmed Shem’s identity. The friend requested anonymity, citing fears of harassment.

Israeli officials said on Monday that 199 people were being held captive by Hamas – about 50 more than previously known – following the attack, which left more than 1400 victims dead.

Israel has responded with heavy airstrikes on Gaza, the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas, and threats of a ground invasion. Hamas has claimed that at least some captives have been killed in the strikes, a claim impossible to independently verify.

President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday to show support for the US ally as concerns increase that the raging Israel-Hamas war could expand into a larger regional conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Biden’s travel to Israel as the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip grows more dire and as Israel prepares for a possible ground attack on the 365-square-kilometre territory to root out Hamas militants responsible for what US and Israeli officials say was the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust.

US President Joe Biden.Credit: Bloomberg

Biden is looking to send the strongest message yet that the US is behind Israel.

His Democratic administration has pledged military support, sending US carriers and aid to the region.

*Warning: distressing descriptions of violence*

Tearful mourners on Monday gathered in prayer at a mosque and placed white and yellow roses at the grave site of a 6-year-old Muslim boy stabbed to death by a man who police say targeted him and his mother because they were Palestinian Americans.

Services for the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, took place at the Mosque Foundation in the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, Illinois, a community known as “Little Palestine” for its heavy concentration of Palestinian Americans.

Wadea Al-Fayoume, 6.Credit: AP

Palestinian flags hung from the windows of cars in a procession toward the mosque, where a digital billboard read: “Stop inciting violence and hatred against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities.”

In the basement of the mosque, women and children huddled and cried, while outside, dozens of people flanked the speakers, including two men who waved Palestinian flags. Mourners chanted “Free Palestine” at the burial site.

“It’s heartbreaking. This child did not deserve to die from what happened overseas,” Juhie Faheem, one of the mourners and neighbour of the family in Plainfield Township.

Family members of Wadea Al Fayoume carry the boy’s casket on Monday.Credit: AP

“What happened in Plainfield is going to make people understand that this hits closer to home and this child was murdered for being Muslim, but he easily could have been any race, any ethnicity.”

The killing on Saturday came a week after a deadly attack by Hamas Islamist militants on Israeli civilians which triggered retaliation by Israel in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The conflict has put Jewish and Palestinian Muslim communities in the United States on edge and fearful of a potential backlash against them.

Just since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights group, has reported cases of harassment, intimidation, vandalism or bigoted internet posting from people with responsible positions in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego, St Louis and Cleveland, plus Austin, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan.

Muslim community members cry at the grave of Wadea Al Fayoume in Illinois.Credit: AP

Police said the six-year-old and his mother Hanaan Shahin, 32, were attacked by their landlord on Saturday in Plainfield Township, about 64 kilometres south-west of Chicago. The boy was stabbed 26 times while his mother suffered multiple wounds. She was expected to survive.

The assailant attempted to choke the mother and said, “you Muslims must die,” CAIR said, citing text messages that Shahin sent to the boy’s father from the hospital. The man then stabbed the woman and child repeatedly with what police described as long, military-style knife with a serrated edge.

A mourner at the grave of Wadea Al Fayoume on Monday.Credit: AP

“This is a heavy day. It is a worst nightmare come true,” Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago CAIR office, said on Monday. “He was a lovely boy. Loved his family, friends. He loved soccer, basketball. He paid the price for the atmosphere of hate.”

Iman Negrete, a Palestinian American who lives in Plainfield, is from the same town in the occupied Palestinian territories as the mother. She wept as she stood next to a makeshift memorial made up of stuffed animals, saying she does not feel safe in the community because of her background.

“It’s heartbreaking. He was Muslim, that’s what happened, he was Muslim and this is what they did, this is what this monster did,” Negrete said.

The boy’s mother came from the West Bank to the United States 12 years ago and his father, a Palestinian who was living in Jordan, immigrated nine years ago, Rehab said.

The boy’s father, Oday El-Fayoume, told a press conference before the funeral that he was neither religious nor political but that he hoped his son’s death would promote understanding of what was happening in the Middle East.

The suspect, Joseph Czuba, 71, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said.

The US Justice Department is also opening a federal hate-crime investigation.

Czuba did not enter a plea during his initial appearance on Monday and has been held in custody.

Prosecutors alleged at the hearing that Czuba grew angry about the war and concerned about his Muslim tenants after listening to conservative talk radio, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The public defender representing Czuba was not available for comment.

Doubling down on the hardline immigration policies that have long animated his base, former US president Donald Trump on Monday vowed to bar refugees from Gaza and immediately expand his first-term Muslim travel ban if he wins a second term.

Speaking to supporters in Iowa on Monday, Trump said that if he returned to the Oval Office, he would immediately begin “ideological screening” of all immigrants and bar those who sympathised with Hamas and Muslim extremists. The war between Israel and Hamas has sparked what is now the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Iowa on Monday.Credit: AP

Trump’s proposals would mark a dramatic expansion of the controversial – and legally dubious – policies that drew alarm from immigrant rights and civil liberties activists, but helped him win the GOP primary in 2016.

Trump has long railed against the US taking immigrants from countries he has dubbed inferior, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, and told the crowd on Monday that while he was president, the US stood up for Israel and “Judeo-Christian civilisation and values”.

Trump also continued to paint himself as a martyr for his loyal supporters, railing against the four indictments he is facing along with a narrow gag order that was imposed on Monday by the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case against him in Washington. The order, which Trump has pledged to appeal, bars him from making statements targeting prosecutors, possible witnesses and court staff.

“I am willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to become a democracy again,” he said.

Trump pledged to bar the entry of refugees from Gaza fleeing Israel’s retaliatory strikes after the surprise October 7 attack, just as he tried to bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries during his first term with an executive order.

The executive order, however, was met with fierce opposition and was fought all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court eventually upheld a third version of the ban, which included travellers from North Korea and some from Venezuela.

Current and former members of communist and totalitarian parties and their sympathisers are already banned from entry into the US. But Trump told about 1500 people in suburban Des Moines that if he won a second term, the US would no longer allow what he called “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs to get residency in our country”.

“If you empathise with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” he said. “If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that, or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds – very dangerous thoughts – you’re disqualified.”

The former president and GOP front-runner also said he would aggressively deport resident aliens with “jihadist sympathies” and send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to identify violators.

“In the wake of the attacks on Israel, Americans have been disgusted to see the open support for terrorists among the legions of foreign nationals on college campuses. They’re teaching your children hate,” he said. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.”

The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service has taken responsibility for the bloody October 7 Hamas rampage that killed more than 1400 Israelis.

In a message sent to Shin Bet workers and their families over the weekend, Ronen Bar wrote that “despite a number of actions we took, unfortunately, on Saturday we were unable to create enough early warning to prevent the attack.”

“As the person at the head of the organisation, the responsibility for that is on me,” he added. “There will be time for investigation — now is a time for war.”

The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.

The Shin Bet leads Israel’s efforts to track and monitor Palestinian militants. The Israeli news site Ynet has reported that on the eve of the attack, Bar was summoned to the office because of abnormal activity detected in Gaza.

But officials believed that only a limited attack would take place, according to the report.

The Israel Defence Forces are preparing to invade the Gaza Strip, and attack by “air, sea and land” after the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, launched an unprecedented and bloody attack on Israel.

Today, the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief reporter Jordan Baker speaks on our daily news podcast Please Explain about what an Israeli ground offensive will mean for the people of Gaza.

Returning to a topic we touched on earlier, opposition Leader Peter Dutton has also weighed in on the Greens’ attempted amendment to a motion in parliament yesterday.

Dutton this morning said he was “blown away” by the fact two teal independents had supported the Greens’ amendment to condemn Israeli war crimes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese moved a motion yesterday that condemned the Hamas attack and supported Israel’s right to defend itself.

The motion also recognised antisemitism, called for the release of all Israeli hostages, acknowledged the “devastating loss of Israeli and Palestinian life” and supported international humanitarian efforts.

But Greens leader Adam Bandt pushed to replace support for Israel’s right to defend itself in Albanese’s motion with a condemnation of the bombing of Palestinian civilians and a warning against the imminent invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Independents Dr Sophie Scamps and Kylea Tink backed the amendment, which was defeated.

Here’s some of what Dutton had to say on Melbourne radio station 3AW - owned by Nine Entertainment Co which also owns this masthead - about Scamps and Tink first voting for the Greens amendment:

“I was really blown away by it, to be honest. I mean, the Greens are predictable because they were always going to be voting the way they did, but for the teals to cross over and vote with them, and against Israel, it was quite remarkable.

There’s obviously a broad range of views on the issue in the Labor Party – and we saw that after the Hamas terrorist attacks a week ago – but all of them lined up and voted in favour of the motion. There was no person from Labor who abstained or voted against and, and yet the teals decided to vote with the Greens, which is quite remarkable.”

Teal MPs Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney, Allegra Spender and Zoe Daniel all supported the government’s initial motion.

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